Transmission

by Hari Kunzru

  ‘With respect,’ said Gaby, ‘you’ve employed me as a press officer, which means that perhaps my opinion on this would be of some use?’

  ‘Please, this is no time for insubordination. Mrs Zahir will write the words and you will read it out – unless girl is willing, for once. Go and tell them outside we will have the statement in one hour and afterwards they will please to disperse.’

  Gaby was too astonished by the way the man was treating her to be properly angry. Without a word she left the room, went back to her own and locked the door. Then for the first time in as long as she could remember she started to cry. She allowed herself five minutes, then took a series of deep breaths and went into the bathroom to repair her make-up.

  Some time later Mrs Zahir caught up with her in the bar and handed her a piece of hotel stationery She had changed and was now wearing an understated late-afternoon ensemble incorporating patent-leather boots and a top with an appliqué elephant picked out in gold on the front. Her eyes were unnaturally bright, her face grim. There was a red mark on her cheek, as if someone had slapped her.

  ‘Leela is too fatigued to speak to her public,’ she snapped. ‘However, I think this captures the tone.’

  Written on the paper in large faltering loops of purple Biro was a press statement. At least that’s what Gaby supposed it was. The grammar and spelling were appalling. It made very little sense.

  ‘You don’t seriously intend to release this to the media, do you?’

  ‘What did you say?’ smiled Mrs Zahir sweetly. ‘You have such a strong accent, my dear. It is sometimes hard to understand you.’

  ‘I have a strong accent?’

  Mrs Zahir was peeping through the curtains at the mayhem on the front lawn. ‘What? Yes, you sound foreign. Now if you give me the paper back, I will go and speak to the international press.’ She put an emphasis on the first syllable of ‘international’, drawing it out so far that the mob of reporters waiting outside seemed to take on the luxurious allure of a bubble bath or a box of chocolates.

  ‘You?’ spluttered Gaby.

  ‘Darling,’ said Mrs Zahir, with the weary finality of a matador dispatching a sickly bull, ‘though I’m not saying you couldn’t be pretty if you made an effort, you don’t have the necessary presence for this kind of public appearance. You should really think about brightening yourself up a little. It would probably help you in your work.’

  Gaby found herself spitting swear-words at the woman’s departing back. Mrs Zahir strode through reception, batting a hand at a set of mounted stag’s antlers which got mixed up in her hair. She drew the bolt on the main door, swung it open and announced herself to the world outside.

  ‘Listen to me,’ she instructed it in a ringing tone. ‘I am Faiza Zahir. The mother.’

  There was a pause, then the flashguns started firing, bathing her in epileptic sparkle. Absurdly she started to wave. Gaby stamped upstairs to her room and slammed the door. To hell with this, she thought. To hell with their film and to hell with Scotland. She was going back to London.

  But first she was going to bed. She shut the curtains, dumped her clothes in a puddle on the floor and crawled under the covers. After a while she switched on the TV and spent a desultory hour channel-hopping between episodes of Friends and the local news, which seemed to consist entirely of arguments about fish. Finally she took an airline mask and a pair of earplugs from her bag and determined to shut out the world for as long as possible. Certain she had some Valium somewhere, she got up again and squatted on the bathroom floor with the contents of her upturned washbag in front of her. She was in luck. Thirty milligrams later she returned to bed and stretched out.

  The next thing she knew it was dark, her mouth was parched, and there was an insistent buzzing sound in her right ear. The sound resolved itself into a ringing telephone, which cut off as she groped for it, leaving her in a state of semi-conscious confusion. She had just retreated back into sleep when someone knocked on her door, calling out her name.

  ‘Who is it?’ she croaked.

  ‘It’s Davey from front desk, Miss Caro.’

  ‘Go away.’

  ‘Could you open the door?’

  ‘I said go away.’

  ‘Miss Caro?’

  Finally, she wrapped a kimono round herself and asked the embarrassed night clerk what he wanted. There was a package for her. No, he couldn’t have kept it until morning because the courier needed her signature. He was sorry to wake her. She shut the door in his face.

  Looking at her alarm clock, she saw it was 1 a.m. She had slept for about five hours. Grumpily she padded downstairs in her bare feet, signed for the package, came back and threw herself down on her bed. When she saw Guy’s address on the waybill, her mood worsened. She tore off the wrapping and opened the box.

  The collar was beautiful. Beautiful and tacky and slightly sad. For a moment she almost felt affection for Guy, for his absurd conviction that money could make everything all right. Then she saw the note.

  And that put the awfulness of her life into perspective. She had spent three years with this man. He had nothing to say to her.

  The old feeling came surging back, the need to break and run. She would leave here tomorrow. Then she would leave London and leave Guy. Start again. She was thinking about planes and packing when there was another knock on her door. She ignored it, but the person on the other side carried on hammering.

  She swung it open and found Rajiv Rana. He looked dishevelled.

  ‘You? Don’t think for a moment you’re coming in. You can go to hell, you arrogant bastard.’

  ‘Is she with you?’

  ‘What are you talking about? Go and pick on one of the dancers if you’re feeling horny.’

  ‘She’s gone,’ he said. ‘Is she with you?’

  ‘Who’s gone?’

  ‘Her. Leela. There’s no one in her room.’

  ‘She’s probably out taking a walk. She goes to smoke by the lake. Why are you bothering me with this?’

  She slammed the door. But all the same she went to the window. There was the castle, floating like a mirage over the lake. There was the mournful plantation of pine trees. The lawn stretched away into the darkness.

  In the EU quarter of Brussels, like all areas devoted to government and administration, the physical has been ruthlessly subordinated to the immaterial, to the exigencies of language. It is a zone of discreet office spaces and muted parks, of affluence without ostentation, expenditure without visible waste. Diplomats from 160 embassies mingle with representatives of 120 governmental organizations and 1,400 different NGOs, all seeking to perfect the most modern of European arts: the exercise of control without the display of power.

  Accordingly there is no hint of fascist grandiosity in the EU quarter, though a trace of unhappy classicism remains in its architecture and oddly also in the marmoreal atmosphere which pervades life here at the heart of the new Europe. The restrained anonymity of the built environment is the outward manifestation of something deeper, which has its origin in the Union’s noble but somehow sinister aim of a final consensus, a termination to the Continent’s brutal Dionysiac history.

  Regulations, statistics, directives and action plans; in the EU quarter language is order and with order comes violence, coded into the harsh planes of the Berlaymont Building, the uniforms of the bored police on security detail outside parliament. It is a violence that has been coated in language, incrementally surrounded and domesticated by it, until it has taken on the soft hue and low light of the rest of the European project. Discreet violence, like surveilled privacy and humanitarian war. Typically European paradoxes.

  Guy was driven at speed down the Rue de la Loi. The passenger seat of Yves’s Porsche smelled of leather and the admiration of his peers. ‘I am so stoked,’ said Yves, and at the wheel of his yellow car with the streetlights shining on his face he looked like the future in human form. Guy wondered when he had first learned this American phrase, during what teen movie or h
oliday to Florida he had heard it and filed it away for use in conversation.

  ‘Me too,’ Guy said. He meant it. He had taken all the rest of the coke before he got on the plane. His heart felt like it was about to punch through his chest wall.

  They parked the car on the street and made their way into the hall of a nineteenth-century townhouse which had been turned into a boutique hotel. The redesign, Yves announced, was the work of a revolutionary. Guy was not sure if this meant the designer was political or just very good at designing things. The lobby was certainly extreme, in an understated way. The walls seemed to glow with a soft internal luminescence, and the staff wore long white tunics, like representatives of a benevolent higher civilization in a science-fiction movie.

  The restaurant, Séraphim, was set under a glass canopy on the roof. The maître d’ greeted them beside a bust of a heavily bearded man. Guy looked at King Leopold II. King Leopold looked back at Guy, who checked his tie to see if it was straight. He was sweating.

  Elegant waiters floated between tables occupied by groups of quietly conversing people. The patrons, men and women, wore the charcoal-greys and navy-blues of trust and probity, a visual field of sober business clothing broken very occasionally by a patterned tie or piece of silver jewellery. A more astute observer than Guy might have noticed the indecipherable quality of these small personal touches, as if instead of being the products of genuine quirks of taste or outlook their function was merely ritual, gestures of support for the idea of individuality rather than examples of its practice.

  They were shown to a table by the window. Director Becker and Signor Bocca were already waiting. Introductions were made, and the Director, a trim blonde woman in her early forties, broke the news that Gunnar Nilsson would not be able to make the dinner. Guy breathed hard and flashed smiles at Becker and the gaunt-faced Italian beside her. He tried not to view Nilsson’s absence as a setback. This thing was just as much her baby, really. She would, she said, be chairing the pitch meeting. Which was something, at least. He tried to will himself to stop sweating. His shirt was plastered to his back.

  Yves started to make small talk about a production of Aida he and the Director had both attended in Verona. In deference to Guy he spoke English, constructing elaborate sentences which the Director matched, clause for clause, the two of them performing a kind of second-language fencing match. Bocca, whom the topic was obviously intended to draw in, stared silently at his hands. He had placed them palms down on the white tablecloth and was assiduously examining his long fingers, as if deciding which of them to sever first.

  ‘Tell me about your work,’ Guy asked him.

  ‘Informatics,’ said Bocca, without looking up.

  ‘Really,’ said Guy, feeling the quest for connection was already hopeless. Bocca shot him a sardonic look.

  ‘The informatic dimension is central to the whole harmonization project,’ offered Director Becker, reaching forward and smiling at Guy, who smiled gratefully back. He found himself wondering what it would be like to go to bed with her.

  ‘The question of the border is a question of information,’ remarked Bocca. Guy was not certain what he meant. It sounded like a quote.

  ‘Naturally,’ said Yves.

  ‘Naturally,’ agreed Guy, following his lead. He was taken aback when Bocca looked up from his hands. ‘You feel this also?’ he asked.

  ‘Very strongly,’ said Guy, trying not to grind his teeth. The waiter arrived to take a drinks order and left again, as Bocca, with the sudden intensity of a man who feels he may finally have found a friend in the world, fixed Guy and Yves with a hopeful gaze and began to discourse on the centrality of information technology to a modern customs and immigration regime.

  ‘I believe,’ he said with subdued passion, ‘it is the most important tool we have. A common European border authority must have common information collection and retrieval. This much is obvious. Otherwise you find some terrorist or economic migrant in one country and lose him again when he crosses into another. Any proposal for the presentation of our border police must incorporate the information dimension.’ He tapped the table to make his point. The waiter returned with a bottle of wine, which Bocca tasted, staring into his glass as if it were a clandestino trying to get work in his mouth.

  Guy gulped his wine, making positive noises as Bocca described the enormous value of the Community’s Schengen Information System in the control of illegal migration. ‘The problem with these people is they lie, they destroy their papers. You have no way of knowing who they are. They say they’re from a war zone but actually all they want is to take a job from a citizen. But if you combine the database with biometrics, you can cut through everything. No more lies.’ He illustrated his point with a slicing clap of the hands, sitting back in his chair with an air of finality.

  ‘You are so right,’ said Guy, pouring himself a second glass. ‘And we’ve picked up on that aspect of PEBA’s role with the creative work we’ve done at Tomorrow*.’

  ‘Really?’ said Becker.

  She was smiling at him again. How old was she? Fifty? Forty-five? He took another swig of wine. ‘Really. What my team has come to realize is that in the twenty-first century the border is not just a line on the earth any more. It’s so much more than that. It’s about status. It’s about opportunity. Sure, you’re either inside or outside, but you can be on the inside and still be outside, right? Or on the outside looking in. Anyway, like we say in one of our slides, “The border is everywhere.” “The border”, and this is key, “is in your mind.” Obviously from a marketing point of view a mental border is a plus, because a mental border is a value and a value is something we can promote.’

  ‘I’m glad you see things in this light,’ said Director Becker, who looked (it occurred to Guy) like a woman who made good use of her gym membership. ‘This youth perspective I like very much. We have a difficult time teaching citizenship to the young.’

  ‘Oh, certainly,’ agreed Guy. ‘Citizenship is about being one of the gang, or as we like to say at Tomorrow*, “in with the in crowd”. As everyone knows, being in the in crowd is a question of attitude and at Tomorrow*, that’s our bread and butter.’

  The conversation was going his way.

  Director Becker started on a convoluted explanation of the genesis of PEBA, which unit of which directorate had supplied personnel for which working group, which interested parties had sent observers, which blocs within parliament had lobbied for which changes in the legislative framework. Guy, who had no appetite, poked a fork into his carpaccio of tuna and tried to keep his mind on what she was saying. It was not easy. The fish glistened suggestively, and all at once, like football fans crowding on to a tube train, a series of graphic images flooded his head. Every one of them (for reasons he knew he ought to be ashamed of) involved Director Becker in the kind of sensibly cut blue swimming costume once worn by girls from his sister school in Gloucestershire. He had spent a lot of time examining those costumes during joint sports days. They would turn from navy-blue to black when they got wet.

  He had to get a grip.

  ‘… towards the establishment of a common border authority, which, while allowing initially for member states to diverge in certain details of their individual policies…’

  ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Sorry, Monika. Carry on.’

  ‘OΚ. Well, so far progress has been good, and we’re actually at the stage of implementing joint actions under the PEBA banner, so of course the incentive is now there to move towards a common look and feel to overlay the policy harmonization.’

  ‘Which is where we come in,’ remarked Yves. Guy gave up on the tuna. He put his knife and fork down on his plate and poured himself more wine.

  ‘I must tell you a secret,’ said Bocca conspiratorially. ‘Monika is being coy about the PEBA implementation. You know why Gunnar couldn’t make it? Officially he’s in Helsinki for the expansion conference�
�� – here he paused and looked about with exaggerated caution – ‘but in reality it’s even more exciting than that. Today is the launch of Operation Atomium. He’s in Paris, watching it from the police control centre.’ He slapped the table triumphantly, like a debater who had just made a telling point.

  Guy blocked out thoughts of towel-flicking and backstroke and framed his face into an expression of interest. Whatever Bocca was on about, it certainly made him happy, and if it made him happy it was important to the pitch.

  ‘Operation – ?’

  ‘Atomium.’ Director Becker laughed, tossing her hair girlishly. ‘It’s just one of those silly boy’s names policemen give their projects. Though it is an important development, this is true. And tonight is an important night. Since Signor Bocca –’

  ‘Please Monika, Gianni.’

  ‘Since Gianni has let the cats out of the sack, I think I can tell you.’ She wagged a finger severely at Yves and Guy. ‘You will not talk to the press?’

  They put on grave expressions, to demonstrate that such a thing would be unthinkable.

  ‘Well,’ she carried on, ‘this is actually the name of the first coordinated PEBA action, which is taking place right now in eight capital cities.’

  ‘What kind of action?’

  Bocca pushed his chair back from the table and crossed one leg over the other. He was unrecognizable as the dour man who had sat looking so glumly at the table. He was relaxed, animated. Guy noticed he was wearing pink and blue argyle socks. ‘A sweep,’ he said, reinforcing the image with his hands. ‘A coordinated sweep, aimed at taking 5,000 sans papiers off the streets by tomorrow morning. Identify them, process them, and return as high a percentage as possible to their countries of origin within seventy-two hours. All based on common information handling, and taking place under the flag of PEBA. What do you think of that?’

  ‘Wow,’ said Guy. It seemed to be the right response.